That pretty much does nothing to stop bed bugs. They're like lice, but worse. They don't care if you're dirty or not. Short of throwing away all your clothes, sheets, curtains, towels, washer, dryer, furniture, and tearing up all the carpet....When it comes to bed bugs on that scale, you're reduced to scorched earth or nothing. And if anyone in the apartments around you still has them, it doesn't matter because they're coming back even if you get rid of them.

Not at all on bedbugs is how it works. These people do not have infestations because they lack cleanliness. These motherfarkers can be as thin as a sheet of paper and can hide anywhere. In electrical outlets, folds of any kind of furniture, behind paintings or pictures, in drawers or wardrobes, in shoes, behind baseboards, in thermostats...practically anywhere.

Pest control is near farking useless as they have become more and more resistant to sprays. About the only thing you can do is drown them, burn them or dry them out. They are FAR worse than lice or any other pest I can think of.

Took two years to get rid of them when we had them. At least six visits from pest control, washing everything we owned.

That accomplished nothing. I too got rid of couches. Three of them. Got rid of box springs and mattresses.

Finally dried the bastards out by putting diatamaceous earth powder on practically everything. That shiat is like tiny little razorblades to them. Cuts them up and dries them out.

Bedbugs don't eat dirt, or skin flakes, or spilled cheetos. They only crave blood. And if you live in an apartment it doesn't matter how well you look after your own suite, because they will come through the walls (via electrical outlets or water pipes) and under your door from across the hallway.

Those bugs are out there. They can't be bargained with. They can't be reasoned with. They don't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are itching like a motherfarker.

My oldest daughter dealt with them at one point. The apartment management paid to have her apt baked three time. She had to pay for it the fourth time, but the exterminator told her if she found another bedbug within a (short period of time) they would come back for free. She found live bedbugs within 36 hours of having her apt treated the next few times. She threw away so many mattresses, box springs, couches, chairs and items of clothing that I lost track.

We/she thought that the problem was mostly under control when she moved out. By the time we got her stuff out to the trucks, half of her furniture was obviously infested.

Not at all on bedbugs is how it works. These people do not have infestations because they lack cleanliness. These motherfarkers can be as thin as a sheet of paper and can hide anywhere. In electrical outlets, folds of any kind of furniture, behind paintings or pictures, in drawers or wardrobes, in shoes, behind baseboards, in thermostats...practically anywhere.

Pest control is near farking useless as they have become more and more resistant to sprays. About the only thing you can do is drown them, burn them or dry them out. They are FAR worse than lice or any other pest I can think of.

Took two years to get rid of them when we had them. At least six visits from pest control, washing everything we owned.

That accomplished nothing. I too got rid of couches. Three of them. Got rid of box springs and mattresses.

Finally dried the bastards out by putting diatamaceous earth powder on practically everything. That shiat is like tiny little razorblades to them. Cuts them up and dries them out.

DE is a good idea. Works on ants as well. It's a lot cheaper to buy it at a pool supply store than from anywhere else.

simplicimus:AdolfOliverPanties: cretinbob: farking sanitation, how does it work?

Not at all on bedbugs is how it works. These people do not have infestations because they lack cleanliness. These motherfarkers can be as thin as a sheet of paper and can hide anywhere. In electrical outlets, folds of any kind of furniture, behind paintings or pictures, in drawers or wardrobes, in shoes, behind baseboards, in thermostats...practically anywhere.

Pest control is near farking useless as they have become more and more resistant to sprays. About the only thing you can do is drown them, burn them or dry them out. They are FAR worse than lice or any other pest I can think of.

Took two years to get rid of them when we had them. At least six visits from pest control, washing everything we owned.

That accomplished nothing. I too got rid of couches. Three of them. Got rid of box springs and mattresses.

Finally dried the bastards out by putting diatamaceous earth powder on practically everything. That shiat is like tiny little razorblades to them. Cuts them up and dries them out.

DE is a good idea. Works on ants as well. It's a lot cheaper to buy it at a pool supply store than from anywhere else.

Philbb:My oldest daughter dealt with them at one point. The apartment management paid to have her apt baked three time. She had to pay for it the fourth time, but the exterminator told her if she found another bedbug within a (short period of time) they would come back for free. She found live bedbugs within 36 hours of having her apt treated the next few times. She threw away so many mattresses, box springs, couches, chairs and items of clothing that I lost track.

We/she thought that the problem was mostly under control when she moved out. By the time we got her stuff out to the trucks, half of her furniture was obviously infested.

SHUDDERso is there an actual solutionother than leaving EVERYTHING that you own and starting over?

/SO FARKING glad that I dont have this problem/WILL farkING KILL whoever brings this problem to my house/no seriously, if you have bedbugs, WHY would you come to my house?/stay the fark away from me until you are no longer unclean

Farkin' frankenbugs. I'm moving to Australia, where the beasts kill you somewhat quickly ('cept those blue-ringed octopus, in which case it's not quick enough) rather than some bug that bleeds you white, won't get off the sofa, and can hide in the remote control.

namatad:Philbb: My oldest daughter dealt with them at one point. The apartment management paid to have her apt baked three time. She had to pay for it the fourth time, but the exterminator told her if she found another bedbug within a (short period of time) they would come back for free. She found live bedbugs within 36 hours of having her apt treated the next few times. She threw away so many mattresses, box springs, couches, chairs and items of clothing that I lost track.

We/she thought that the problem was mostly under control when she moved out. By the time we got her stuff out to the trucks, half of her furniture was obviously infested.

SHUDDERso is there an actual solutionother than leaving EVERYTHING that you own and starting over?

/SO FARKING glad that I dont have this problem/WILL farkING KILL whoever brings this problem to my house/no seriously, if you have bedbugs, WHY would you come to my house?/stay the fark away from me until you are no longer unclean

I really don't know if there is an effective solution. At one point it was believed that it was an occupational therapist that was showing up on a weekly basis to treat her middle child.

hammettman:The easiest way to get rid of bedbugs is to import some spiders. Oodles and oodles of farking spiders. Of course, that may present another problem when all is said and done.

We're talking about Arizona....do you really want black widows and tarantulas all over your apartment? And then you have to bring in a bunch of gila monsters to get rid of the spiders, and then gorillas to get rid of the gila monsters.

Farxist Marxist:Farkin' frankenbugs. I'm moving to Australia, where the beasts kill you somewhat quickly ('cept those blue-ringed octopus, in which case it's not quick enough) rather than some bug that bleeds you white, won't get off the sofa, and can hide in the remote control.

A friend of mine had them in her apartment in a well-to-do part of Sydney. In the end, she pretty much abandoned everything she owned, went slightly psycho and sat in a sauna for three hours (something about the heat killing the farkers as she thought they had got into her skin) and would only wear newly bought clothes. She then began to haunt non-bedbug-infested suburbs looking for a new place to stay, bug spray in hand. Poor girl is from London and last I heard she had returned, only to face the evil once more.

/And those bugs that bleed you white, won't get off the sofa and can hide in the remote control? They're known as men down here.

Just a thought. What if you sealed the house the same way they do when it's bug bombed, or fumigated, and used Halon (which removes all the oxygen in the room, and is often used for fire suppression in sensitive areas like computer rooms, and archives) instead?There would be no residue, and no poisons. You wouldn't even have to remove the food.

TommyymmoT:What if you sealed the house the same way they do when it's bug bombed, or fumigated, and used Halon (which removes all the oxygen in the room, and is often used for fire suppression in sensitive areas like computer rooms, and archives) instead?

These farkers can go for a year without feeding. I suspect they can also survive a short period of oxygen deprivation.

TommyymmoT:Just a thought. What if you sealed the house the same way they do when it's bug bombed, or fumigated, and used Halon (which removes all the oxygen in the room, and is often used for fire suppression in sensitive areas like computer rooms, and archives) instead?There would be no residue, and no poisons. You wouldn't even have to remove the food.

Might work, but Jesus Christ would it be expensive. Halon also doesn't remove all oxygen in a room, just enough to put a fire out. I imagine you'd have to pump a boatload of the stuff in for a while to kill the bugs, and it would have to penetrate all the little nooks and crannies they hide in. I don't have figures, but I imagine Halon doesn't penetrate the inside of a mattress all that fast.

The_Sponge:hammettman: The easiest way to get rid of bedbugs is to import some spiders. Oodles and oodles of farking spiders. Of course, that may present another problem when all is said and done.

We're talking about Arizona....do you really want black widows and tarantulas all over your apartment? And then you have to bring in a bunch of gila monsters to get rid of the spiders, and then gorillas to get rid of the gila monsters.

Unfortunately, Mesa doesn't have the cold winters to kill the gorillas.

AdolfOliverPanties:Pest control is near farking useless as they have become more and more resistant to sprays. About the only thing you can do is drown them, burn them or dry them out. They are FAR worse than lice or any other pest I can think of.

...

Finally dried the bastards out by putting diatamaceous earth powder on practically everything. That shiat is like tiny little razorblades to them. Cuts them up and dries them out.

They're not resistant to the pyrethrin derivatives used in most indoor pesticides... they're by and large completely immune to them. The diomataceous earth method has had some success, but the first and most effective thing to try is heat treatment, and that requires heating every internal volume in the building to in excess of 120 Fahrenheit uniformly, which is unfortunately flat-out impossible in many older buildings and even some newer ones.

The biggest problem is not even getting rid of them so much as the dormancy cycle of the eggs, if not heat-treated as above or sprayed directly with a dessicant (ethanol or methanol, usually, and I mean directly sprayed, you have to pull every baseboard and electric outlet cover in the house and any other crevice and spritz 'em) then they can stay dormant for as long as a year before hatching. Which means you sweep up your little circles of ethanol trench or sharp earth around the bedposts after sterilizing and a week later you're getting bitten again.

//Yeah, guess how I learned this one. Apartment management is a pain in the ass.

namatad:SHUDDERso is there an actual solutionother than leaving EVERYTHING that you own and starting over?

Again, 120 Fahrenheit+. Get an extermination company that actually specializes in bedbugs to give you a sealed bag with a heating unit in it, fry it for 4-8 hours. Generally you'll want the actual specialists involved to make sure it's heated uniformly, cold spots can harbor the eggs/bugs.

I know it's weird that the only really workable solution is almost literally "kill it with fire", but don't look at me, this is the actual result of industry research in the property and pest management industries.

ladyfortuna:People have been biatching about the snow. I say bring on the winter low temps. Freeze these farkers out (along with a host of other invasive bastards)

Considering it's been -20C or lower here for most of the last two months and I have to have my apartment prevention treated for the second time on Monday because the apartment above mine has bedbugs, I suspect cold temperatures outdoors don't play much of a role in whether you have bedbugs indoors.

spawn73:namatad: Kingly Weevil: My real question here is, How the f*ck do you afford ten couches before you can afford to leave your f*cking apartment?

HOW can you be so stupid? You would figure after the first .... 2 or 3 couches that you would learn to sit on metal folding chairs UNTIL the damn bugs are GONE GONE GONE

So you'll have bedbugs in metal folding chair instead?

What would you accomplish other than sitting less comfortable. Well, maybe they'd be cheaper to replace constantly.

They are cheaper and easier to sterilize then a couch, so that could be one reason to go that route.Aside from that, I imagine you could try to get used to sleeping on a cot that you can more easily clean daily and is cheaper and less of a pain to move in/out if it gets hopelessly infested.